Sunday 5th January 2025
Matthew 2 1-12
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany is a particularly enchanting word. An epiphany can be a realisation of something, a new reality being apprehended by our consciousness, a moment of illumination and insight. But for the Church this is a time when we explore the sense of God becoming present in our world, God’s manifestation.
Another word for today’s feast is the feast of the Theophany, perhaps an even more powerful word than epiphany. Theophany is described as ‘an encounter with a deity (a God) that manifests in an observable and tangible form.’ The divine presence breaking through into our world so that this presence is somehow received by us. This is what draws the wise men from the East, they have observed what they interpret as a divine manifestation. “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
These wise men’s wisdom is not a simple matter of observing the divine, instead they have the wisdom to let the divine into their minds and hearts. For them the encounter with God is not an intellectual exercise. It is a time to be overwhelmed. ‘When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.’
For us, as modern people, the sense of the divine often seems to have been repressed and excluded from both the private and public realm. In a world which is so chronically distracted it may appear almost impossible to have any sense of divine encounter or divine communication at all. But God still manifests God’s reality and beauty in the complexity of our world and within the complexity of who we are. We can all have moments, and more than moments, when a richer presence and reality makes itself known.
Poetry, in its own particular way, speaks to us of God’s epiphanies, God’s revelation to us of a more creative way of being. One of the masterpieces of poetic literature is Dante’s The Divine Comedy, where Dante travels through Hell, Purgatory and finally discovers Paradise. On his journey he is helped by another poet, the poet Virgil. The Divine Comedy is a long, complex, medieval poem. But we could also say that the Bible is a long, complex library of poems, histories and myths. We read these books because they can help us to receive the divine reality more profoundly. They expand the horizon of our hearts, just as the star expanded the hearts of the wise men who saw and followed it.
Here is a small part from Purgatory, the second book of The Divine Comedy. It tells us about the nature of what God manifests to us in Christ. These verses are spoken by the figure of Virgil, who often helps Dante to understand more subtly what he is learning on his long, arduous journey through these three realms. Here Virgil is talking about the nature of God’s love.
“Since you insist on limiting your mind to thoughts of worldly things alone, from the true light you reap only the dark.”
These words describe how we all may live within the limitation of our worldly thinking. Virgil continues, “That infinite, ineffable true Good that dwells in Heaven speeds instantly to love, as light rays to a shining surface would;” Here the verses reveal how the divine is drawn to love, how God manifests as love. “just as much ardour as it finds, it gives: the greater the proportion of our love, the more eternal goodness we receive;” The more we love the more divine love we seem to receive, is a way of reading these lines. “the more souls there above who are in love the more there are worth loving; love grows more, each soul a mirror mutually mirroring.”
Dante is describing how the divine love wishes to be realised in us and shared through us. The wise men allow themselves to follow the summons of divine love, to be overwhelmed by the divine love, and to honour, worship and love the divine love revealed in Christ. They participate fully in God’s revelation of love through their own capacity to love, ‘On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.’
There is a way at looking at an epiphany, a theophany, as something we experience or see. But it is perhaps better to think of it as something we realise, or we grow into. If we limit ourselves to ‘worldly things’, we will manifest a love which is always on the point of collapse and is always concerned about what it may get in exchange. But the wise men, and Dante in The Divine Comedy, share a vision of divine love which is still only just impinging on our narrow and defensive hearts and minds. This love gives without limit, this love manifests in the world if we have hearts and souls to sense it, “just as much ardour as it finds, it gives:,” this love “grows more, each soul a mirror mutually mirroring.” In a world which is so brutal, divided, and narrow, this love still seeks to be revealed, to be communicated, to show there is always another way and to draw us into the ecstasy of love’s realisation.
The Reverend Ben Brown. Epiphany 2025. Purgatory. Dante Alighieri. Penguin Classics. Translated by Mark Musa.
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